I was asked to write a short paper about a product I love or hate as an assignment in a course on User Experience in Design. My task was to explain how the product design contributed to or detracted from a good user experience. It felt too easy to tear apart a poorly designed product for bad UX – I felt compelled to challenge myself to explain just what makes a good product good. I chose to write about Dark Sky, a weather forecast iPhone app I truly love. Read the paper here:

I really could have gone on and on about the reasons I think Dark Sky's UX epitomized good modern app design, but this was, after all, a mini-paper. I love good design, especially when it goes deeper than appearances, down into the theoretical structure of an idea or process. Dark Sky isn't just a pretty app (although I do find it to be quite pretty), it's a deeply clever app that performs a common task in a new and, I think, better way.